


It's delicate

by mysonny



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, F/F, post island
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28677894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysonny/pseuds/mysonny
Summary: Fatin is self-destructive and pulls away after getting back from the island. Leah isn't having it.
Relationships: Fatin Jadmani/Leah Rilke
Comments: 16
Kudos: 229





	It's delicate

**Author's Note:**

> English isn't my first language, so please excuse any mistakes!  
> Hope you enjoy this :)

Fatin goes right back to her old ways when they get back home. Or what they called home before the island – everything – happened at least. Her parents don’t make her go to that boarding school but they also don’t let her fuck off to LA. She’s not 18 yet and maybe finishing school isn’t that bad of an idea. Or so they say.

They walk on egg-shells around her, somehow afraid of her. And probably for her, too, but she doesn’t want to think about that. The point is, they leave her mostly alone, not breathing down her neck every second of every day like they did before.

For that reason, she doesn’t play Cello anymore, only goes to school and to parties. She hooks up with a lot of guys – and occasionally girls – because she needs it. She needs to feel. Something, anything. And that’s the only way she knows how to.

She knows the people at school talk even more now than ever before. And it’s not like she has friends she can lean on to. She didn’t exaggerate when she said she didn’t do friendships with girls. And all the guys she talks to are only doing it to get into her pants.

She knows she’s never cared before what the other students thought of her and realistically she still doesn’t but the constant stares get on her nerves.

-

Fatin turns around from her locker to get to her next class and locks eyes with Leah across the hall. Leah who’s texted her a bunch of times and even left her voice messages all the times she didn’t answer her phone. 

She sees Leah opening her mouth, already walking over, and turns around leaving in the other direction. She misses the hurt look on Leah’s face who lets Ian talk for the reminder of the day, not listening to him and not really caring what he has to say either.

Fatin knows she’s in for it when she gets a call from Dot later. She obviously doesn’t answer her either. At first that is. She’s tempted to when Dot calls for the fifth time in three hours.

But her ride to the party of the day arrives, it is a Friday night after all.

Dot’s insistent calling is what wakes her up the next morning. She’s still too tired to even look at the caller-ID and doesn’t dodge the call.

“What?” she grumbles into her phone, assuming it’s her mother from downstairs, telling her to get up like she often does on the weekends, not bothering to come to her room.

“That’s how you greet me after I called you like a thousand times? Shit, Fatin, what’s up with you?”

“Ugh, Dot?” Fatin sits up in her bed.

“Yeah, dude, Dot.” She hears her friend sigh at the other end. “Why don’t you answer your phone? And why can you text me about how fine and dandy your life is but can’t answer Leah who lives literally five minutes away from you?”

“Okaaaay, we’re getting right into it.” She rolls her eyes. “Can I maybe wake up first?”

“Wake up? It’s 1 pm. Were you out last night?”

“And what’s it to you? Yeah, I was. You know I don’t pass up a party on a Friday!”

“I don’t care about the partying, you do you or whatever. But I care about Leah calling me, almost crying.”

Fatin’s breath hitches but she is quick to recover. “And how’s that my business?”

“Uh, I don’t know, let me think. Maybe because you haven’t answered her texts in three weeks? Since we’ve been back. Or because you hide from her at school. Or maybe because she tried to talk to you yesterday after hunting you down and you ignored her.” Dot takes a deep breath.

“Look, I’m not going to tell you what to do. Mainly because you would do the exact opposite.”

That at least gets a giggle out of Fatin “True.”

“But at least like tell her you don’t want any contact with her or something. This ghosting route isn’t really your style anyway.”

-

Of course, the call doesn’t get Fatin to change her behavior. Not really at least. If she doesn’t hide at school anymore it’s a coincidence she tells herself. But now she’s almost daring Leah to come up to her again. She even starts to go to the one class they share after a few days. But Leah doesn’t try to talk to her. She also doesn’t text or call anymore.

And Fatin should be relieved about being left alone. That her ignorance worked and that Leah finally got the message. Just like she wanted. But she isn’t relieved and she hates it.

She sees that Leah is just as sad and quiet as she was when they first got to the island. Leah somehow retreated completely back into herself and again only really talks to that Ian guy. And what’s up with him? Fatin can’t shake the feeling that he wants more out of the friendship with Leah than she does. It calms her a little that when she sees – watches – them from a safe distance he always seems to do the talking while Leah just walks next to him, not engaged at all. Half the time Fatin isn’t sure she’s even listening.

-

She literally runs into Leah a few weeks later at a house party someone in their year is throwing. Fatin wasn’t aware that Leah knows the guy. But apparently, she knows him well enough to be drunk at his party.

Leah looks disoriented from running into another person. She stumbles a little and catches herself with the support of the wall. She looks uncertainly at Fatin, eyes unfocused and far away.

“Leah?” Fatin waves her hand in front of Leah’s face. “You good?”

“Fa– Fatin?” Leah croaks out, trying to focus on the person in front of her. “I might be drunk.” She shrugs. “But I’m good, so good.” She sways a little with the music playing from the other room and tries to smile. She only manages a half-smile that comes out a little forced. Fatin knows that it would convince most people. Since most people don’t know Leah as well as she does.

“My car is outside, let’s get you out of here and home, alright?” she raises an eyebrow at Leah when she doesn’t immediately start following her. “You coming?”

Leah nods rapidly and stumbles after her. Fatin doesn’t let herself help Leah through the house and outside, driving her home is already against everything she’s tried to do since they got back. It’s breaking all the rules she’s made for herself. But she couldn’t leave Leah at this party, with a bunch of drunken lunatics, all by herself. She knows how unsafe that is.

Fatin puts on some music to mask the awkward silence during the drive. She watches Leah out of the corner of her eye.

“Didn’t we agree to stop that?” She really can’t help herself and more or less snaps at Leah.

Leah’s hand freezes where it’s picking her eyebrow. She lets her head fall back into the headrest and sighs without acknowledging Fatin. But her hand stops the picking.

She stops in front of Leah’s house after a long ten minutes. Fatin hadn’t let herself look over at Leah too often but the silence was getting even to her after a while. She wanted to ask Leah why she was picking her eyebrow. She wanted to ask her why she was drunk. Or why she even was at the party in the first place. If she had come alone or if her friends had left her alone. How she was sleeping, all alone in her bed. How seeing a therapist was for her. If she was even seeing one. How she felt in general and why she lets Ian talk all the time instead of telling him to just shut up for a minute. How dealing with her parents is and if she still talked to the other girls.

But she can’t let herself do that.

“Fatin, I– “

Fatin musters her best unimpressed look before turning to face Leah. She raises an eyebrow again, hoping to come across as impassive as possible.

“Nevermind.” Leah mumbles. “Thanks for the ride I guess.” She fumbles with the door for a second, still a little drunk, and gets out of the car.

Fatin only nods and watches until Leah gets into her house before driving off.

-

“FATIN!” her brother shouts from downstairs.

“WHAT?!”

“There’s someone at the door for you!”

Fatin knows this can’t be good. Not many people know where she lives. And she can’t think of someone who would show up unannounced on the weekend at noon.

She sees Leah before the other girl can see her. She stands in the door, looking around their hallway uncertainly. Her brothers peek out from behind the door to the living room but she doesn’t think Leah notices them, too far into her own world.

Fatin studies her for a second, really looking at her up close for the first time in weeks. Not from the distance she usually puts between them and not just in passing like last night.

Leah has dark circles under her eyes. Fatin thinks they are almost darker than they were on the island. She wonders how that’s even possible. She also notices Leah’s hand nervously picking at the hem of her shirt. It’s better than at her eyebrows at least.

She steels her face and approaches Leah.

“What are you doing here?” she hisses at the other girl.

“I just–“ Leah’s voice cracks how it always does when she’s close to crying or very exhausted. “I just want to talk to you.” She gnaws at her lip and doesn’t make eye contact with Fatin who has to stop herself from looking at her lips. “Please?”

Fatin sighs and feels her resolve crumble, she is not getting out of this today.

“But not here.” She brushes past Leah and down their driveway. She doesn’t look behind her but just assumes that Leah will follow her.

They walk like this for a couple of minutes, Fatin determined to get to that one bench in the shadow around the corner, Leah just following her.

Fatin feels her walls already cracking when she hears a quiet sniff from behind her. The whole time on the island she could never stand seeing Leah upset or retreating into herself. She had made it her mission there to pick Leah up when she was down, to maybe get a smile out of her. When she got a laugh, it made her day. But she had put an abrupt stop to that when they got back to their real lives. Whatever real means.

“Fatin…” she hears Leah from behind her but keeps walking.

“Will you just talk to me?” Again, Leah’s voice cracks halfway through the sentence. She stopped a couple of feet behind Fatin and looks utterly helpless.

It takes all of Fatin’s willpower to not close the distance between them and hug Leah. She’s not certain that she would ever let go if she did that.

She masks the emotions on her face and in her voice before answering: “Chill, the bench I was going to is right there.” She points to the bench, a hundred yards away.

They sit down and Fatin can see the hurt in Leah’s eyes when she puts as much distance between them as possible.

She wants to reach out and stop Leah’s hands from picking at her clothes, from drawing nervous patterns on her thigh. She wants to reach out to catch the lone tear that’s making its way down Leah’s cheek. But she doesn’t.

Leah looks down at her own hands, trying to find words. And Fatin just keeps watching Leah. Like she’s always done in the duration of their friendship.

“Can you at least tell me what I did?” Leah’s voice cracks as she suddenly looks up and catches Fatin staring.

“Or is it just me? Am I just too much? Too obsessive, too crazy, too much to handle? Too broken?” She whispers the last part, staring at Fatin with wide eyes.

And Fatin’s heart shatters at Leah’s words. Knowing that she caused Leah to go down such a deep spiral makes her angry with herself. She wanted to protect Leah from her, not cause even more pain and spiraling. She wants to say something to make it better but she can’t find the words.

“Because, you know, I thought– I _felt_ there was something there. And I guess, my mind made that up and that’s okay but I thought we were at least friends.” Leah stops looking at Fatin and just watches the cars driving by.

“There was something.” Is all Fatin comes up with as an answer to Leah’s confession. She knows that isn’t sufficient but she needs to start somewhere. “Look, you know how I am. I do hook-ups and parties and want to get out of here. That’s it. And that doesn’t fit with your life and the idea you have of me because of the island.”

“Oh wow, 'the idea I have of you' do you always kick people when they’re already down?” Leah laughs bitterly now.

And while that’s what Fatin initially wanted, she isn’t sure she likes it.

“That’s not what I meant.” She relents, not wanting to cause any more damage for Leah than she already has.

“Just, we both know that my lifestyle or whatever isn’t what you’re looking for. I’m not a stable person to lean on for a long-term relationship. I’m not good with commitment, I can’t be what you need after that disaster with Jeff and the island. I go to parties every weekend and hook-up with people.” Fatin shrugs, not daring to look in Leah’s direction. “And if we were even just friends, you would want to come with me to parties and I don’t want that for you.”

“Okay, fuck you!” Leah bursts out. “You’ve already been exactly that for me on the island. The stable, the constant, my rock. The person I could lean on for support, the person who kept me from going down the crazy-spiral too much. And then you decide to just cut contact with me? If I’m not cool enough to go to these parties with you, okay. I get that. But fuck you for making the decision about us by yourself and not letting me in. So, what you like to party? So, you'd go to parties, sometimes I’d go with you and other times I wouldn’t. And I’m sure we could’ve found a solution for the sex-part as well.” Leah blushes. “Just don’t push me away because you’re afraid of something good.”

Fatin had started to cry about halfway through Leah’s outburst. “But I’m like him.” She spits. “He always said how much I’m like him. And I can’t put someone through the same thing my Mom went through.”

Leah tentatively reaches out, presumably to touch Fatin, but changes her mind and runs her hand through her hair.

“It’s in your own hands though.” She lets out a shaky breath. “And that doesn’t mean that you can’t ever be in a relationship to avoid it. But you can prove to yourself and to him that you are different. And I know you are, you showed it on that damn island. I wouldn’t have made it if it wasn’t for you.” She shakes her head when Fatin tries to protest. “No, I really wouldn’t have, Fatin. I need you to understand that.” Leah looks at Fatin intently from under her lashes.

“So, where does that leave us?” Fatin asks carefully.

“I don’t know. For you to decide I guess. I mean, you know where I stand but I don’t know where you stand if we take all the bullshit reasons you have for ghosting me out of this.” Leah chuckles bitterly.

“Leah…” It’s Fatin now who reaches out. She places her hand on Leah’s knee.

“I’m sorry, okay?” She scoots over on the bench so that they’re sitting closer to each other. “I was such a cunt to you.” She copies Leah’s apology from ages ago and gets the reaction she hoped for: Leah laughs.

“If I wasn’t so personally victimized…” Leah cites with a grin on her face.

And finally Fatin doesn’t stop herself anymore from doing what she wants. What she has wanted. She reaches out and cups Leah’s cheek. Leah looks at her with wide, vulnerable eyes, but leans into the touch. Fatin brushes a few tears away. Tears that she’s caused. She hopes she can forgive herself for that.

She leans in a little “Can I?”

Leah only nods.

Fatin lightly brushes her lips over Leah’s as if to test it out. It’s a little uncertain, maybe wondering if it’s really the right thing to do or still providing Leah with a chance to back out. But Leah chases her lips, not letting their first kiss end just like that. She pulls Fatin closer by her hips, deepening the kiss, very sure that it is the right thing for both of them.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is obviously from Taylor Swift, cause that song just really fit them in this story.
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments if you’d like :)


End file.
